


The Hunger and the Stars

by gypsyweaver



Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [16]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), not much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsyweaver/pseuds/gypsyweaver
Summary: Aziraphale has some explaining to do, and what he's got to tell Crowley is going to require some aftercare.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684990
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	The Hunger and the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceAsADHD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceAsADHD/gifts).



> CW: Mention of previous dubcon, drinking, alcohol abuse, barely any smut
> 
> (Chapter ran long, so smut goes in the next chapter. Y'all, it's not that I lied, it's that I failed.)

_In for a penny, in for a pound_ , Aziraphale thought.

“I became the Principality...of you!” he exclaimed, holding his hands together so tightly that his fingers and knuckles whitened.

Crowley’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked hoarsely. “How...is that even possible?”

Aziraphale blinked. His fingers loosened their grip on each other, and he felt the earth return underneath him. He was back on familiar ground. “Oh, well, a Principality can protect a people, a place--some even protect ideas. I was protecting Rome, and...it changed. I started protecting YOU.”

“I understand how Principalities work, angel,” Crowley said, massaging the bridge of his nose. “What I meant is...uh...I’m a demon, angel.”

“I know that. You’re definitely not an aardvark.”

“Eh...yeah. So how did you become the Principality of a DEMON?”

“I believe that it happened when I fell in love with you,” Aziraphale continued, quite pleased with himself for knowing the correct answer.

“You fell in love? YOU fell in LOVE with me?!” Crowley shouted. “You IGNORE me! Is that how you LOVE someone? I thought you barely tolerated me!”

“Oh, no...no, my dear. Please try to understand--“

“What’s to bloody understand, Aziraphale? You call this love?”

Aziraphale was on his feet, faster than he had ever been before. “Yes, I do,” he said, and his voice was a lethal thing. It was soft, dark, and sharp as a scalpel. “A Principality is charged with the PROTECTION of something. Of ONE thing. One thing that they love. I love you deeply. And the safest place for you was as far away from me as possible.” He paused. “I failed you so many times. I could not stay away--not for long.”

Crowley rolled onto his feet, uncurled slowly, and faced Aziraphale. There was a dreadful sadness in his face. An acceptance. “The other angels,” he said. “They would have killed me.”

“And made me watch. Yes. Like with Sodom. Yes.” Aziraphale looked away. Crowley’s gaze on him was suddenly too much. “And another thing...there’s a great deal of p-pain...physical and psychic...if a Principality should fail...to protect...”

“How many times, Aziraphale?” Crowley asked. “How many times did they hurt you?”

“The Eastern Gate...Unicorns, but that was Shemp’s fault. Still hurt though. Let’s see...Sodom...the Library of Alexandria--but I managed to copy almost everything, so it wasn’t quite AS painful. Then, Rome...but before it could really fall...there was you.” Aziraphale smiled at Crowley. “There is still you.”

Crowley swallowed hard. “And...how many times have I hurt you?”

“You? Never, dear boy. Never. But I have hurt myself. The Holy Water was, I promise you, the very worst of it.”

“You...couldn’t even give me something that COULD destroy me, even if I wasn’t planning on using it for that purpose?”

“Correct! But I...that water came from the Golden Shores, you know?”

“You...stole from HEAVEN...for me?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, feeling the blush creep to his cheeks. “I would do anything for you, Crowley. Anything except stay away. But now...I don’t have to and I don’t want to. Even these few steps feel too far...”

Crowley was in his arms. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but it did. Crowley’s body crashed into him and his arms somehow found their places. He stroked the soft hair at the nape of Crowley’s neck, and felt him relax into the touch. Crowley’s breath rose and fell on Aziraphale’s neck as his scent settled around him.

“Please, don’t ever leave me again,” Crowley rasped, his voice thick.

“Never, my dear.” Aziraphale sank into the sofa, and Crowley followed, curling onto his lap. “But...there is...em...you see, I...” Aziraphale took a breath. “I have removed three of your memories. For your safety, and mine.”

“Three?” Crowley asked into Aziraphale’s neck. At least he assumed that’s what he said. He was a bit muffled. “Which three?”

“The three occasions that we were intimate,” Aziraphale replied, fingers tracing the knobs of Crowley’s spine.

“Intimate? INTIMATE?” Crowley pulled away, put both hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders. “We...fucked?”

Aziraphale nodded. “Thrice.”

“Thrice?”

“Yes. Once in Rome, once in your bandit cave near the road to King Arthur’s castle, and once...just after the Blitz,” Aziraphale could not met those lovely, probing gold eyes. “I...took your memory. Each time.”

“WHY?”

“Well...I love you, and I think you might feel similarly about me? At any rate, we were rather deep in our cups all three times and--“

“No, no, no! Not ‘why did we fuck?’” Crowley interrupted. “Why did you take my memory?”

“Oh...erm...well,” Aziraphale sputtered. “I thought that if you remembered...you might want to do it again...”

“Didn’t catch that last part, angel.”

“I thought you might want to do it again!” Aziraphale said. His hands went to Crowley’s on his shoulders. “I couldn’t...every time, I was putting you at risk. It was selfish of me--and I know I can hold my alcohol a good deal better than you, so...it was a bit predatory on my part, as well.”

“You...got me drunk...in order to fuck me?”

“Oh, I’d say you got yourself drunk,” Aziraphale said, with a sniff. “I just...encouraged prudence...when I knew that it would incite you to do the opposite.”

Aziraphale plucked Crowley’s hands from his shoulders and held them between the two of them. His thumbs ran over Crowley’s beautifully-formed knuckles. His hands were so lovely. It was easy to forget himself in his smooth, cool skin. In the knobs of bone beneath. To forget that he still had words that needed saying.

“But I knew what I was doing,” Aziraphale said, plainly. “A Principality cannot protect what he does not love. Unfortunately...my love was dangerous to you. I knew I was putting you in danger, and I did it. I put you in danger, for my own selfish...appetites.”

“You said that putting your protectorate in danger hurts,” Crowley said, his voice teasing apart the walnut of Aziraphale’s words. “So...did...did it hurt you...when we...?”

“Yes.”

“But you still...?”

“Dear boy, you were worth the pain. Every bit of it. But...I should not have put you in danger with my affections.” Aziraphale paused. “And...I daresay that I took advantage of your inebriated state on all three occasions, and I should not have done that, either.”

“Did I at least enjoy myself?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale blinked. “Of course, you did! You climaxed so hard in Rome that you passed out from it. I wish I could tell you that I played the gentleman, but unfortunately, that just spurred me on and well...you woke up with each subsequent climax. Enough to call my name, at least.”

Crowley opened his mouth and then closed it. He opened it again, and again, it clicked closed. He cleared his throat.

“I wish I could remember,” Crowley said.

“I don’t think there’s any danger in it now.”

“Whut?”

“It’s all in there, Crowley. Just a matter of repairing the damage that I did...I mean, if you want me to.”

Crowley pulled his hands back and grabbed Aziraphale by the lapels. He allowed Crowley to pull him close. “’If I want?’ Yes, I DO want!”

Aziraphale reached up, cupping Crowley’s jaw in his hand. He found the spots of Crowley’s brain that he’d previously touched, and healed what he’d withered so long ago.

Crowley closed his eyes. A tear streaked from his left eye, and he turned his lips to Aziraphale’s palm. “Angel...”

His only tear in six thousand years. And the endearment. That word held so much pain. And something else, Aziraphale thought. Something quicker and dearer than pain.

“I’m so sorry, Crowley...”

Crowley nodded, and his cheek found Aziraphale’s shoulder. He crumbled into him, and Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him.

“You’re a bastard, you know. Keeping this from me,” Crowley muttered. There wasn’t any venom behind his words.

“I am,” Aziraphale admitted.

“I wouldn’t have thought that you even knew how...”

“Crowley, we were in Rome together. And in other places before. Humans did it on the streets--to say nothing of the ducks, who never had any shyness.”

“Ducks?”

“And other animals. Copulation is not complicated.”

“Being good at it...is.”

“Oh, fie. It's easy!”

“Did you say, ‘fie’?”

“Yes. Are we not saying ‘fie’ anymore?”

Crowley chuckled. “Not since the seventeenth century.”

“Oh, drat. I rather liked ‘fie’.” Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Can you forgive me, my love?”

“For ‘fie’? Yeah, angel. You’ve said weirder things, honestly.”

“No...for the rest.”

Crowley smiled. Aziraphale couldn’t see it, but he could feel his lips moving. “Yeah, angel.”

Aziraphale hugged him tighter, inhaling the scent of him. His reptilian musk, the cologne he favored when he went around as a man--wood resins and spice. God knew, he was a miserable angel who hungered so terribly. Who lusted and needed and took and took. He wanted to give. He needed to give.

“My love,” he said, his voice as soft as his camel coat. “Might we retire above? As God and all the angels seem content to leave us to ourselves, I’d like to make some new memories...ones that I won’t have to remove for your safety.”

“Yesss...” Crowley hissed in his ear.

Aziraphale needed no further encouragement. He gathered Crowley into his arms and fairly sprinted up the stairs.

“Is it still tartan?” Crowley asked before Aziraphale yanked the door to this bedroom open.

“Does the sun still rise in the east, my dear?”

Crowley responded with a resigned sigh.

It was tartan, and Aziraphale liked tartan. He opened the door to the room he barely used. The bed had been a gift from Crowley, plucked from the rubble of Paris after the Terror.

“I dunno if you even use a bed, but I saw it. And the headboard’s got those carved wings, I mean...thought you might like it,” he remembered Crowley saying as he showed Aziraphale the bed.

Aziraphale had accepted the gift, and somehow managed not to throw Crowley down on it in the spirit of breaking in the mattress. Such an intimate gift, a bed.

It was oak, carved and polished. The bedside tables, oak and sturdy, Aziraphale had picked up at thrift.

Crowley’s eyes went to the massive wardrobe, as Aziraphale thought that they would.

“Where did you get that?”

“The wardrobe? Poor old thing was bound for the dump, but I rescued it,” Aziraphale explained.

He’d thought it looked lovely and lonely on the curb. A beautiful old baroque piece, carved ebony wood. The door panels told the story of Eden, the Serpent wrapped around the tree and holding an apple in his mouth.

“Is that me?” Crowley asked.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale said. “His eyes had been inlaid with some stone or another, but that had been pried out before it was left for the rubbish collectors. I tried to match the color.”

The polished amber was a near approximation, but Aziraphale much preferred the real thing.

“I had to fix the hinges, the drawers--all by hand. There were a few scratches and scuffs that required miracles, but I am supposed to maintain my cover, so those were easy to explain to Upstairs.” Aziraphale felt quite pleased with himself.

He lowered Crowley to the bed. “This bed! I didn’t know if you kept it,” Crowley said.

“Of course--a bedroom must needs have a bed.”

“Do you ever sleep here?”

“I did. Once.”

Crowley’s eyes widened behind his shades, and Aziraphale surged forward. His lips found the demon’s. Crowley did not resist, as Aziraphale pinned him to the mattress, settling between his legs. Opening his mouth and feeding on what lay inside.

He felt Crowley’s legs wrap around him as he found the back of his slender neck with one hand, angling him up. He wanted deeper inside. A kiss as hot and penetrating as he could make it, feeling Crowley’s agile tongue darting and pressing against his.

If there was any mercy in God, and the angels must take him for being the incompetent that he was, Aziraphale desperately wanted them to come now. To wink his life out here, in his bed, between Crowley’s legs, the most sacred place that he’d ever known, and had only known on three occasions.

And, if God be merciful, could She let him take Crowley with him? He loved the stars. Was there, perhaps, some kinder God that could set them there? A binary system, whirling around each other for eternity?

The moment passed, and God did not strike him down. Not that he thought that she would. God loved him, in spite of his shortcomings. Aziraphale always knew that God loved him.

He’d never done this sober before. Never completely.

When he’d taken his fill of Crowley’s breath and lips and tongue, kissed him deep enough to leave him breathless and whimpering, he stood up. The morning light through his (yes, tartan) curtains splashed on Crowley’s hair, and Aziraphale wanted to see it across his skin. He gently unhooked those dark glasses from his ears, and slipped them off, folding them and setting them on his nightstand.

“Your eyes are like enough to amber,” he said, laying a gentle hand on Crowley’s cheek. “But I’ve always seen them in the sunset, to be honest. It’s a specific shade of gold, the gold of the sun as it whispers goodnight. I’ve been very drunk and very lost and very busy...but I’ve rarely missed a sunset. It was the only way to look into your eyes.”

Crowley flushed, hot and bright against Aziraphale’s hand. He turned kissing his palm and flicking that lovely tongue of his against the skin.

“You’re...good with the words,” Crowley murmured, lips and breath hot against Aziraphale’s palm.

“You inspire me,” Aziraphale replied, smiling. Gently, he took Crowley’s wrists and pulled him up. “Your clothes are miracled, dear. Much as I’d love to undress you, I cannot.”

He leaned down, bracing himself on Crowley’s shoulders. He lowered his lips to Crowley’s and felt the leather and cotton disappear under his hands. Crowley had him by the lapels, pulling uselessly. He whined into Aziraphale’s mouth.

“Em...my clothes have a few miracles, as well,” Aziraphale replied, breaking the kiss.

He stepped back, shrugging out of his jacket. Crowley watched him, his eyes wide and pupils as round as they got. Aziraphale had seen his eyes like that on a spare few occasions. Galaxies swirled there, making the darkness bright.

And the morning sun splashing his skin was divine. How it found the lines and curves, traced them in gold and shadow. He’d inspired a great deal of art in his travels, and it was no great mystery why.

Jacket and waistcoat gone, shirt shed and undershirt uptugged and discarded. Aziraphale was usually more tidy, but it was all he could do to just get out of his clothes and toss them on the old (tartan, naturally) wingback chair in the corner. He stepped from his shoes and stripped his trousers and pants. The socks and garters were the last, unclipped and yanked off, tossed into the pile.

“You know, I don’t think I give the Creator enough credit, sometimes...” Crowley mused. “She made you perfect, didn’t She?”

Aziraphale blushed from his dimpled cheeks, across his chest, to his dimpled knees. “She saved the finer brushwork for you, my dear.”

“Me? I’m skinny and weird.”

“You are glorious. Let me show you.”

Crowley looked up at him, amber eyes glowing under flaming lashes. “Alright, angel...”

It was very nearly a question. Soft and unsure. It was all the encouragement that Aziaphale needed to lower himself to the bed, to bring his lips to the knuckles that he’d stroked earlier, to begin his devotionals to the flesh of his beloved.

“Your hands, Crowley, they are beautiful,” he said, soft as a prayer. “Your fingers are clever things--nimble across your electronics--and this thumb--“ Aziraphale held him gently by the mound of Venus. “This thumb, hooked in the pocket or waistband of those leather trousers...just this thumb...you’ve tempted me so desperately. Running it over a pen or the lip of a bottle, oh, whatever you were holding...nearly as bad as your tongue, to be honest. You’ve made me jealous of a strawberry ice lolly.”

Crowley chuckled. “I’ve been jealous of the sun on your face, angel.”

“Have you?” Aziraphale asked, cocking his head to one side. Slowly, he slid Crowley’s thumb past his own lips, smiling a bit as Crowley gasped. He tongued the pad of his thumb as he wanted to tongue his cock. Slowly. Reverently.

He withdrew his mouth from Crowley’s thumb and laid a kiss on each of his fingertips, on the heel of his palm, on the soft skin of his wrist.

Crowley watched him, seemingly torn between fascination, and something darker. Fear. There was always fear, and yet...every time that he stopped and asked...

“Dear boy,” Aziraphale said, moving up, face inches from Crowley’s. “Do you want me to continue?”

Every time that he stopped to ask Crowley’s permission, he answered in the same way.

“Yeah, angel, I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> For AceAsADHD who apparently consumed this whole beast in one night! Wowzers!
> 
> Okay, so Aziraphale is, indeed, a bit of a bastard. Principalities love deeply, and when the thing they love is a person, there's a carnal element. Especially for Aziraphale, arguably the most gluttonous critter in this whole series!
> 
> Smut in the next chapter. So sorry for the tease, but alas, I went long with this chapter.
> 
> I breached 40K words. My GF laughed at me. She's very supportive.
> 
> Kitten update: Kathryn has found her furever home! I'm very happy for her. She got adopted with the fourth littermate, who was being fostered by another lady. So she's going to live with her sister with a wealthy cat lover. 
> 
> Reznor and Weasley have been fixed. So they'll be up for adoption in a few days. They are adorable. 
> 
> Kitten updates and poetry on my Tumblr, ([SEDeHaven](https://sedehaven.tumblr.com)), and I started one for [GypsyWeaver](https://gypsyweaver.tumblr.com) as well.
> 
> Stay safe, y'all!
> 
> Comments and kudos are like whiskers on kittens!


End file.
